I fully understand and appreciate the concept of the Merit system.

But i also think that it's going to hinder the genuine people that post in threads that will not get merited because people either don't want to merit or they just cannot be bothered to use the system like that. which then in turn will take them an age to rank up.

would it not be more beneficial to add like/dislike buttons or potentially a up/down voting buttons that can then rank members up or down?